Calendaring is an old and well known technique of reminding one of coming events. Commonly used is a calendar or diary made up of a number of bound sheets of paper with each face of each sheet forming a page. As such, there is one page per calendar day and the pages are usually time divided. For example, along the left hand margin of each page may be printed times at one hour increments with the first listed time being 9:00 a.m. and the last being 5:00 p.m. This time span would cover working hours of a day. The blank spaces to the right of the printed times are for writing in event descriptions related to the times, such as "Meeting with Bill Jones", "Dentist appointment", etc. Such calendars often have many event descriptions entered therein and serve as a convenient reminder of the next occurring event. Also, available times for scheduling additional events are easily located due to the blank space opposite the available times. However, a somewhat later search for the earlier entered day and time of the "Dentist Appointment" can be time consuming and tedious. Such a search can require leafing through a large number of pages and reading many event descriptions.
With the advent of modern keyboard/display stand alone and host connected terminal work stations, and calendaring application programs, the burden associated with the above described "lost event" problem has been somewhat lessened. Using a calendaring application, a user at a work station can call a day screen for keying in times and event descriptions. Work of others has contemplated the taking of each of the day screens and in turn building a filled-in monthly calendar screen. One embodiment of a month screen includes a lined grid forming boxes or blocks for each day of the month. Based on the month in question, numeric notations are appropriately located in each of the applicable blocks. For example, if the first day of the month in question falls on a Sunday, the Arabic numeral "1" could appear in the upper right hand corner of the upper left hand block of the grid. Other than being displayed on a terminal work station display, the monthly calendar is not distinguishable from monthly grids appearing in commonly available bound calendars or diaries having the grids printed on paper.
In the building of filled in month screens for display, others have contemplated including event description abbreviations within the blocks. Also contemplated has been the time-wise positioning of the abbreviations within the blocks. An example would be the positioning of an "D" in the center of a block and along the bottom border thereof to denote "Dentist appointment" at 12:00 noon. With this arrangement, blank spaces represent times available for scheduling meetings.
As is readily appreciated, the "lost event" problem is now much more manageable. Required is the calling of the filled-in month screen for display and a visual scanning of abbreviations. For each "D" detected, the corresponding day screen can be called to confirm the existence of the appointment.
A number of problems still exist, though. One is the excessive keying and attention necessary to cause the abbreviation to appear on the month screen. Required is the bracketing of a keyed in abbreviation with keyed in symbols or codes in a particular column or field on the day screen. Following keying, a portion of a day screen can appear as:
10:00&lt;M&gt;Meeting with Sam Smith PA0 11:00&lt;M&gt;Meeting with Bill Jones PA0 12:00&lt;D&gt;Dentist appointment
Another problem still existing is that on the display screen, the abbreviation location and the time of the event are not always readily correlatable. Practice and a sharp eye may be required to determine that an "M" spaced from the left side of the block by an hour increment denotes a 10:00 a.m. "Meeting with Sam Smith". In like manner, the time of a blank is often subject to estimation.
The invention of this application presents advances over known art or work of others in that a monthly calendar is presented wherein event descriptions themselves are directly abbreviated, and times when no events have been scheduled are set out in a distinctive manner. The advantages of these advances are reduced keying and/or coding, and readily discernible times for events, and times available for scheduling events.